With the election of a new Republican senator, there is no longer any hope for the Obama administration. Nothing will be done by the Dems at all. The Reps won't let anything of any significance go through. In my opinion, the Dems should do the same thing, but they are being kind, thoughtful, and reasonable, and continuing to vote for things that the Reps want. They shouldn't. What is the ultimate end? Only one possibility: Unaware voters (sheep) will see that only the Reps are accomplishing anything, and vote for them more heavily next time. Including the next presidential election.

We have become a One-Party Nation.

I feel really hopeless.

I'm sure that The Nobility (Yes, we have that. They are rich and powerful, and view the rest of us as beneath them - commoners, surfs, servants, laborers who exist only to make their lives more pleasant.) believe themselves to be good, honest, hard-working, Christian, Right people. Notice that they have labeled themselves The Right. We, who want equality and equal opportunity, are The Left. Very telling, that. "Right" is defined as accumulation of wealth at the expense of those around you; climbing the ladder of success, each rung of which is some person or group of people that you have trampled. They label this with high-sounding verbiage - 'Independence' and 'Libertarianism'. The even claim to themselves that this is 'Christian.'

Note: I am not exactly 'Christian', in spite of how the following may sound. But I believe in it as being a Good Thing. At least, the way it was presented by one Jesus of Nazareth.

Personally, I object to their taking over those terms. Independence, at it's essence, means that people can go about their lives free of interference from outside forces. Libertarianism means that each person is free to pursue their own dream. Christianity should mean that we consider others before ourselves.

There's a disconnect there. The Right - the Republicans - have twisted Independence to mean that they are above any kind of interference, including the law and common sense; have twisted Libertarianism into Apartheid - sifting society into a class structure with themselves at the top and letting the weak and unfortunate simply die, because after all they aren't worth anything. Since real Christianity would abhor all of that, 'Christianity' has been redefined something along the lines of "God is a Republican, and doesn't care about Dems, the poor, the middle class, and people who aren't white." They're careful about how they position that stance though - they still need the votes of many of those undesirables, and the incidence of poor and non-whites who attend Christian churches is high, so they need to be very carefully lied to!

My sister, wild and rebellious in her youth, intelligent and educated, actually believes that Bush was a better person than Obama! (Because he's more 'Christian', mind.) It boggles me. I think she has even begun to acquire some racial prejudice - she who nearly married a black man.

The fact is, the very principles that conquered a raw wilderness land have lost their impact in an overcrowded world. A land that welcomed the strong, independent families to carve out farmsteads miles from their nearest neighbor is not very comparable to one where it's nearly impossible to find a place without a view of anything man-made. You cannot trample rough-shod over any territory without trampling people.

When a family farmed a homestead, they had to be independent in order to survive. And liberty is what allowed them to do the necessary things to create new settlements. But they were Christian, they followed their consciences and willingly, freely helped their neighbors. It worked. They (we) thrived. Thus the concept of The Right was born - these principles were 'the right' ones, and they have been mangled into today's definitions.

In a more crowded world, the Europeans are leading the way. Europe was overcrowded for so long that it learned cooperation, redistribution of wealth, compassion, and utilization of every resource, including the poor. From my (admittedly parochial) experience, Europeans fit better into a humanity which is one unit rather than Free Independent Individuals who attempt to work together, mostly unsuccessfully.

If this nation is to survive (not a given), we must go farther than the mere bi-partisanship which is already too liberal for the Right's sense of independence; we must see ourselves as individuals working within a community of individuals, each of which are as important as ourselves, and as necessary to the whole.